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It’s scary sometimes, being the Whitest Man in Orange County. Especially when you’ve somehow come to represent the brownest assembly district.
You require extra layers of protection. Your skin is unusually delicate and sensitive to the elements. What would give most of us a pleasant tan or flush can cause you painful peeling blisters.
It’s scary on top of that, to be (almost) the only Democrat in Sacramento to vote against a minimum wage increase, to be on the wrong side of the burning issue of the day – our nation’s screaming income inequality. To try to pass through life as a member of the People’s Party, while in reality being the most fervent handmaiden to big business interests that fund you.
Especially scary when your position is indefensible, so that you always have to change your justification. Today you say it’s just that you’re against “indexing” (keeping the minimum wage tied to changes in the Consumer Price Index through the future) but we all remember that you’ve been trying to sabotage minimum wage hikes on various pretexts for a while.
How scary is all this? So scary that when a couple dozen peaceful protesters show up at your district office begging you to reconsider, your people call the police on them.
And then it must be infuriating that when the CHP (the agency tasked with “protecting” our lawmakers) shows up, they nakedly side with the protesters and take chummy photos with them.
All of this happened yesterday, March 30, and then today Assemblyman Tom Daly stubbornly voted against SB 3, the minimum wage increase which gradually moves us up to $15 an hour by 2022. One of only two Democrats to do so. And it passed anyway.
And this is typical, for Daly to break with his Party and vote with the Republicans on the big issues. I think I’m-a vote for that nice Republican Latina who’s running against him – Ofelia Velarde-Garcia – at least she’s not pretending to be something she’s not.
And I bet she wouldn’t call the police on peaceful protesters.
April Fool’s joke? He didn’t really, did he? (But if not, where did you get all of those actors?)
Serious as a heart attack. Ask Julio Perez, Gloria Alvarado, Martin Lopez, or Yesenia Rojas.
Yeah not a good decision on Toms part since it was going to pass anyway. Now he has to deal with the fall out. It would have been bad but less bad had he just abstained.
But I guess it makes his funders happier to see a big bold NO.
Daly was elected by Republicans. Dog bites man.
Dog dressed as cat however.
But nobody was fooled.
You think not, because you hang out with smart people.
I do?
Or maybe with dogs, following Vern’s metaphor.
I can only guess what Assemblyman Daly’s rational for opposing this vote, but along with Governor Brown, many incuding me are concerned about this legislation statewide.
While we live in Metropoliton Los Angeles, where costs (rent) is exorbitant, much of the states economy can not support this DRASTIC wage increase, take Yuba City for example, or eastern San Diego county. These businesses can not sustain wage costs greater than 50% of income. People will simply lose their jobs.
I agree that income equality is a paramount issue of our time and future, but this special interest (SIEU) extortion ammounts to a helicopter drop of money ala GWB in 2002. It won’t work.
My guess is that there will eventually be some waivers and variances for smaller businesses — but not for a while, as the wage increases only $1/year for five years.
But let me ask you: if you admit for the sake of argument that $15 is a fair minimum wage for Los Angeles and Orange Counties (or most of them), what do you think is the appropriate minimum wage for Yuba City or El Centro and how do you go about determining it?
I think it was while I lived in DC that the Unification Church’s Washington Times moved into a blighted part of the city. The compound they built practically had a moat around it — the building was set far back, like trying to get to any structure within the Seal Beach Nuclear Weapons Station — but they got some really sweet tax breaks and incentives for locating their castle there. (Not that they hired locals or anything.) I worry that minimum wage exclusion zones would work about the same.
Let me guess.
He’s endorsed Lou Correa.
and by. lou just got the ocbc endorsement lol birds of a feather
I don’t blame Daly. He has been a heartless, racist politician all his life. I blame Jose Solorio (#StillDeadToMe) for this. If it was not for Solorio selling out, Daly wouldn’t be there voting against the poor over and over again.
Who was this CHP and how were they allowed to act autonomously and intelligently? Bravo!! Looks like good union brothers and sisters enjoying freedom of speech and assembly in the land of the free to me. Damn shame Daly had a problem with it.
Tom Daly’WTF’maybe it’s time to step aside,take a high paying job in the private sector…you will never need to worry about putting food on the table,to feed your family,a healthy state pension healthcare for the rest of your life and let Me remember you as the Mayor of Anaheim and Councilmember Member,School Boardmember in you’re more idealist? days and let me remember you…as you were then.
Well, this IS April first, but-
1) WHAT possible “private sector” job would be higher paying (per effort required) than his current one ? And WHO (except those writing the campaign checks he now cashes, from taxpayer bucks he votes on) would hire him ?
2) What memories of idealism are those ? I remember the Daly who was a reflexive supporter of both Redevelopment largesse (remember the financial sinkhole in Downtown, and Gigante Supermarkets fighting the City to open ?) and Tourism District giveaways (The resort agreement that gave away BOTH the Angels naming rights AND the $100M Disney Parking structure ?)
Unless, like the 2 Jose Morenos, are there 2 Tom Dalys running around in Anaheim? I’d rather just forget the one above, except I’ll never stop having to PAY FOR HIM !
I’m a-gonna guess that it’s Mark Daniels, not Tom Daly, who has changed over the years, who has developed a sharper and more critical view of things since he was a young Mayor Daly admirer.
And you would be right. Daly got his political start 30 years ago at the County where the cash nexus and the Main Chance are the motive forces.
Big Box, that parking structure was way more than $100MM and will be ONE AND A HALF BILLION by the time we pay it off, only to sign it over to Disney, after they spent decades hauling in EVERY NICKEL of revenue. I gotta give Daly somewhat of a pass on that one, given the economic climate of the times, and the info available at the time. I may have voted for that deal myself. The ones I really blame are the current batch of Anaheim morons who failed to USE the “let’s re-examine this in 20 years” window put in by then BRAND NEW Council member Tait, because had our leaders recently looked at the deal, seen how badly we have outgrown the payment schedule and desperately need to retool it, the time to do it was BEFORE we gave Disney an extension on their gate tax exemption, without looking at the consideration initially offered in the first agreement. But the rest of Daly’s tenure has been rather disappointing, with the high point (low point?) being A) employing Jordan Brandman B) giving Jordan a make-work project to write a report for the County as a “small business owner” in order to change his ballot title from “County hack” and of course C) the ongoing and continuing support of Brandman, no matter how inane and perverse Brandman’s sense of social justice becomes. Look at Daly’s website and ask yourself what he has done for the citizens of his District. Gee, there WAS that Health Fair. That seems to be the activity du jour for leadership these, days, from City Council to County and State leadership, they are all hosting health fairs. Otherwise the big piece of legislation from Daly was pulled from consideration by the author, because BOTH SIDES were furious at his bill. Not a remarkable career so far.
As far as the min wage increase, do I really have to say it? Seriously? If $15 an hour is unsustainable for some parts of the state but not others, then it is not income inequality that is the problem, it is the COST OF LIVING in urbanized locations. And what makes it more expensive to live in high population areas? Environmental compliance requirements, pushed onto us by…wait for it….Democrats. The cost of following multiple, sometimes conflicting and duplicative regulations drives up the cost of new housing by tens of thousands of dollars per unit, and that cost is passed on to the consumer, until existing housing prices rise to follow the cost of the new housing market, making housing unaffordable for the poor sap making minimum wage. Add gas taxes that hit the working poor hardest (they drive the least fuel efficient vehicles) and a host of other paper-pushing requirements courtesy of the left-leaning State government.
So the Dem controlled string pullers in Sacramento have driven up the cost of living, their regulatory nightmare has forced good paying jobs to flee the state, leaving nothing but the minimum wage crap jobs behind, and now the same guys are “leveling the playing field” by raising wages by 50%, whether the cost of living in an area warrants it or not. Way to go California!
I know this is a revolutionary idea, but humor me. How about we go through each and every bizarre regulatory requirement on the books, and erase each and every one that either has not met the benchmarks claimed when the laws were put into effect, or was passed without any way to measure the outcomes for success or failure? We invite good paying jobs back into CA, begin chipping away at the cost to build new housing, begin to lower the cost of driving a car, you know, make California the awesome place it once was…and before you know it there is no need for that higher minimum wage, because the market will fix the problem.
If we can get good jobs back here, our workforce might have a place to MOVE up to for a better paying job, and not be forced to raise a family on minimum wage as the only job available to them. Entry level work becomes a low-paying dead-end career if there is nothing to move up to after “entry” into the workforce!
As far as income inequality, we have had that before Daly was in office. It’s called “envy,” and once upon a time it was not seen as the role of government to satisfy the envy of one segment of the population who wanted what another segment of the population has achieved! It used to be that when you want to make more money you bust your butt to get an education, or invent a better widget than the next guy and you earn it. You do not get there by forcing widget makers to pay widget techs 50% more, meaning employers will simply kick their workforce to the curb if they don’t produce widgets equivalent to their new pay scale, or pack up and leave CA for a place where their widget production remains in line with the cost of widgets. There are some expenses you cannot pass along to customers. If your consumer base is NATIONAL and includes places NOT impacted by the higher wages, why would anyone pay more for a widget you made more expensive, but not more valuable? The widget factory in TX is going to clean the clocks of California’s widget industry, and there isn’t an exemption that is going to fix it.
STOP monkeying with the market! STOP driving up the cost of living in CA. STOP driving up the cost of doing business in CA, and we can then STOP figuring out how to fix “working poverty” in at least some areas currently being destroyed by California’s ruinous economic climate. Yes there will still be pockets of poverty to deal with, but we will have far fewer of them, and we can then focus on the real problems instead of the one-size-fits-none solution Sacramento just cooked up.
This is not brain surgery. But it is above the minds in Sacramento.
See? I told you guys she was a conservative.
I gotta go find some charts for you, of how income inequality has inexorably grown in this country since the 60’s. It’s not “envy.” And it’s naive to think it wasn’t planned. Every now and then the people, through their representatives, have to fight to get back just a LITTLE of the ground they lose over the decades when they’re not paying attention cuz they’re working so hard.
Please include college graduate rates with that chart.
There are plenty of charts in the WSJ:
” From 2005 to 2012, average student loan debt has jumped 35%, adjusting for inflation, while the median salary has actually dropped by 2.2%. ”
Envy is quite a factor in our dogmatic world, but in real life even the USWNT is suing for wage discrimination.
COLLEGE ? For the “Fight for 15” demographic, the operative degree is probably closer to High School, and LOOK what the Sacramento Geniuses (sarcasm, apologies to MENSA) are doing to THAT-
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/capoliticalnewsandviews/state-legislature-ordered-diplomas-arriving-for-failed-high-school-students/?
(UM, de-valuing it ?) Folks, I hope that doesn’t explode your heads, but that will probably happen, close to it for me. FWIW-
I don’t think I’d use the word envy, unless that term refers to envy of big corporate lobbyists getting the California Legislature to do what you want.
This has less to do with economic justice, than using union political strength to increase the pay for unskilled union labor. Of course everything above will get ratcheted up, too, because that’s how it’s gamed.
“David” above, is also right. Why on Earth should there be a standard for Blythe and Santa Monica, San Francisco and Ukiah?
My point is that raising the minimum wage is going to do NOTHING to bridge the gap of income inequality. You think boosting the lowest pay rate by 50% is going to get the little guy one step closer to the big fat cat corporate dudes we are all pissed off at? PLEASE pull out those charts and make damn certain to mark where employment is today, because it is going to drop as this takes effect. Cranking up the cost of producing something in CA is going to kill production in every area that sells outside of our area. Well done, guys.
The problem of income inequality is rooted in the powerful using public resources to condense their power even further, hoovering up the money in the system into tightly concentrated circles, crushing competition by use of legislation and monopolies that Gilded Age robber barons would have applauded, and I’m sorry but scoring slightly more pay for unskilled labor doesn’t put a dent in that inequality. The two subjects don’t overlap AT ALL.
Wait-I take that back. Big special interests ARE involved here. Let’s look at who DOES benefit from this insanity. Unions will now have higher paychecks to extract dues from. The State of CA will have higher paychecks to deduct taxes as a percentage of pay. Expenses like Workers Comp are based on wages, so they will scoop up more free money for the same bad coverage. But in no way is this going to make an apartment in OC more affordable, and any public subsidies based on sliding scale of pay will also be skewed upward and negate that gain as well. The working poor got hosed by their own leaders on this one!
The $5 increase does not come close to bridging the gap of affordability, which is pegged at about $30 an hour in OC for a family to have a decent apartment and basic expenses. So at the end of the day we will have eliminated entry level jobs, as employers scale back to get their labor costs in alignment with production, or as employers take the U-Haul plan altogether, and those workers are STILL at least $10 to $15 an hour shy of covering expenses, while the increase gets sucked up in taxes and other losses. Yes, please, Chairman Vern, get out the charts for a subject not related to low wage labor and not corrected by this incremental “gain” for the little guy.
Cynthia — has the minimum wage ever been this high in the past, using constant dollars?
(Yes, it has.)
Did prophesized horrors ensue?
(No, they did not.)
Also: this is being phased in over seven years. This is being done cautiously and at a measued pace, allowing us to learn from experiments like that in Seattle (which hiked its wage in one fell swoop snd is now experiencing an economic boom.)
Right. Booming I’m sure due to the minium wage hike.
I’m sure hiking the minium wage in San Jose would have similar results.
I’d like to see what raising the minimum wage does in Needles, or Delano, or Alturas.
I’m disappointed to hear Lady Ward resorting to certain GOP/FOX/Koch talking point cliches. Most of us don’t waste our time being “pissed off” at the “big fat cat corporate dudes.” I’m sure many millionaires and billionaires are very nice people. This is just the “envy” “class warfare” line to make us look petty and hateful when we just want a little justice, when we want it to not be so near-impossible for a couple of working parents to support a family.
It’s a firm element of your faith that raising the minimum wage will result in loss of jobs. It’s an equally firm element of liberal faith that putting more money in the pockets of working people is a great way to boost the economy and lift all boats. We each have experiences and studies we can point to to back up our contentions. I refer to Greg’s above. This is not an outrageous or unprecedented level, it’s being phased in cautiously, and most recently it worked great for Seattle.
“David” may have a geographic point, but to compare a permanent, slow, wage increase to the one-time shot in the arm Bush gave us in 2002 is comparing apples to pine nuts.
Then Cynthia’s repeated insistence that the size of the minimum wage has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with income inequality is just baffling. I mean, sure, there is a lot more to the latter. But here. Here is my one hand way up here, and my other hand is way down here, as far as I can reach, and that’s inequality, and I just brought my lower hand up a couple inches, see?
That is all. Carry on.
To Lady Ward’s point, total wages helps to balance inequality.
Hourly wages aren’t total wages.
Full time at $9.50 is $19760 a year.
Part time at $15.00 is $15600 a year.
Minium wage increased, income disparity increased. Why? This individual is now underemployed because her employer was given a major incentive to reduce the labor required to deliver her product or service.
Stating raising the minium wage decreases wealth disparity isn’t any more or less true than stating tax cuts result in increased disposable income.
It simply does for some, but not others.
Why?
#scarcity
What makes you think that 40 hours worth of work can always (or even generally, or even often) be done in 20 hours?
If that’s not true, then your point doesn’t have bite.
If that is true, then I suspect that that slack has already been squeezed out of today’s low-income workers, many of whom are part-time.
Why do I believe in supply and demand? Well, I don’t know really. But, for a single example, automation has a high hurdle barring entry. Specifically, the cost of capital necessary to implement a new (or updated) system. Raising wages lowers that bar by improving the investment’s return, driving employers to make a move to automation they wouldn’t have otherwise made. Technology eliminates jobs to preserve a price point dictated by the market.
For the sake of many working families, I hope you’re right. Gambling with their future is pretty darn risky.
But back to my point, this policy will create losers just as it creates winners. Unfortunately, no one will care about the losers– people put out of real jobs, because the government is here to help.
That’s a cogent point. What bothers me is that cogent points of that type often lead to a philosophical justification for peonage, indentured servitude, and slavery.
Eventually, human workers won’t be able to compete with machine workers. When that day comes — and preferably before — we will have to think about whether people in this country deserve a guaranteed minimal annual income simply for serving others, if not for existing.
Sounds far-fetched? Sounds horrible? Compare it to slavery, famine, pestilence, and war. If you want to get that abstract, that is.
No way, Greg. Plug me in to that Matrix. 🙂
“Why do I believe in supply and demand? Well, I don’t know really.”
Sure you do, Ryan. It’s a rational description of economic activity, a gift of the Enlightenment in which labor, like any other property, is valued based on its relative abundance or scarcity.
Recent discussion has seriously hindered my ability to label anything “rational”.
I feel like I’ve been locked in a room with the ‘Ships for two days.
Steady on, now. Steady on.
The most important question concerning the Sacramento action to increase the Ca. minimum wage up to $15 is simply this: Will it have the desired effect of making all those now in minimum wage jobs better off? Is the answer yes, no, maybe or nobody really knows for sure.
I report, you decide.
The question, Mr. Levinson, is whether it is the role of government to set the price of labor for non-government work? Labor is a commercial contract between workforce and the marketplace. I agree to work for a given rate, someone agrees to pay me that rate in exchange for my labor. It is on me as the laborer to set my price for my work, and negotiate the highest price I can set for myself. My price must equate to a value in the marketplace, if I cannot get the price I want, I can refuse to work for a client, and if that price is consistently refused by those in my field, then clearly my value is not equal to my price, and I must make myself more valuable to the marketplace, or accept a lower price more consistent with what the market believes my work is worth. I don’t look to government to negotiate a better deal on my behalf.
Indeed, negotiating a better wage is the role of labor unions, who are free to convince workers of the union’s value to negotiate on behalf of the workers, which in turn equates to dues paid in exchange for benefits provided. The unions may then pull together the power of numbers to refuse to work for poverty wages, and then the marketplace will be forced to raise wages until their workforce returns to punch the time clock. WHY would I be OK with the idea that my government is now doing the work once assigned exclusively to the private individual and/or the labor unions, now that the labor unions failed to do the job their dues paying members expected, or failed to enroll enough dues paying members to make a difference in the marketplace> Yes, I know that is simplistic overview of a complex economic premise. But show me an argument against it.
One can make the case that the community should not underwrite the cost of low wage labor, and thus all employment must be offered at the prevailing wage that is tied to the cost of living within a community. This would run counter to the fact that we are raising wages equally across the State, even for those living in places where minimum wage goes farther. This also ignores the market reality that we purchase what we can afford, if one cannot afford rents in a given market one lives elsewhere (as my kids have done, with one Helluva a commute) but to say, “I want to live HERE so pay me more or otherwise underwrite my cost of living so I may live where I please,” seems rather unAmerican to me. Not everyone gets to live in Malibu, and for some Anaheim is the out of reach market, that is why it is called a market and not socialism. I would like to eat at the French Laundry, but I don’t expect someone to fund that choice by claiming that eating is a fundamental right or function of being human, and therefore I am owed the finest multi-course organic gourmet meal when my earning power clearly screams Denny’s.
The role of government is to step in if business creates an unfair monopoly that artificially suppresses the wages of an industry (as I believe has been done with tourism in Anaheim, in the City Council’s consistent subsidy and development of ONLY tourism as an employment and tax base, ignoring the better paying and more market stable jobs of manufacturing, or other industries that should be encouraged in Anaheim, which in turn suppresses tourism pay because workers have nowhere to move up and out of “entry level” tourism work.) But can we really claim that every employer in the State of California is in cahoots with each other to suppress minimum wage? Or is an individual’s labor worth a set price in the market?
If one lives in an area where few are willing to work low skilled jobs, you raise the wages until you get someone to do the work. In California we have an overabundance of workforce willing to work for minimum wage (or less) and they undercut the workers who would prefer to demand more money. Ironically it is the same political minds that promote an abundance of low wage labor as a benefit to California who are now demanding better pay for the low wage labor they are encouraging. Similarly it is the same political party that has created the regulatory climate that drives up the cost of housing, and has stripped the once-great State education system of its ability to offer in-state students an education that lets them work their way out of poverty by making themselves more valued to an employer. The Left needs to make up their minds. They either recognize they have created the environment in which low wage labor is plentiful, the cost of building housing or even driving a car for a long commute have been driven up with taxes and unfunded mandates, and they have failed to provide opportunity to increase productivity that has been proven to raise wages. But they want to raise wages anyway. I need to buy stock in UHAUL. They are going to be busy, but those trucks are going to run ONE WAY only.
And yes, I can see the smoke coming from the ears of Dr. Diamond, rising above the skies of Brea… I happen to be more compassionate and reasonable than many of my cohorts in my party, and certainly outdistance the Presidential hopefuls eager to fly the elephant (Thank you Ryan Cantor for that awesome phrase) but I am still a Republican to the bone, and this tinkering with a market the Dems screwed up in the first place makes me nuts. Economic opportunity and abortion will get a fight out of me every time.
“The question, Mr. Levinson, is whether it is the role of government to set the price of labor for non-government work..”
That is not the, or even a, question. The answer is yes.
See how few words I used there.
How about a price ceiling, Nipsey?
Not sure I understand the question, is it whether there should be a legal ceiling to how high a state, if it has one, might set its minimum wage? That sounds like a solution in search of a problem,
Max wage.
I’ve heard this from the liberal side of the fence a lot lately. Wanted your take.
Last one I heard was 250x lowest paid employee. That’s $7,800,000 for CEOs employing minium wage workers @ full time.
Sorry, didn’t realize you were held captive and forced to read my lengthy explanation against your will. Perhaps you would explain HOW it is the role of government to set the price for pay, and how they went about determining $15 was fair and equitable? Is $15 an hour a reasonable exchange for ALL forms of work in ALL industries in ALL areas of the State? How can that be? Please feel free to use a few more words to expand on your theory of government’s authority in the marketplace.
“Perhaps you would explain HOW it is the role of government to set the price for pay”
Sure, it’s called the Fair Labor Standards Act. It’s constitutionality was upheld 9-0 in US vs. Darby Lumber. In the (unanimous, obviously) decision it was stated that the question was no longer open to discussion.
The number is precisely the question, not whether the government has a right to set one. That is the extent of my interest in this subject.
Boo. See above.
According to an organization of business owners, there are not only some positive aspects to the wage increase but it was also overdue. Ben & Jerry may be kind of hippies but they must know something about business and the economy.
http://www.businessforafairminimumwage.org/pressreleases
Perhaps of interest re” “what they knew and when they knew it” ? FWIW.
http://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_truth_about_ben_and_jerrys
Some have argued that this move will enable some “far flung” locations to flourish. If you can make $15. Per hour in the uber affordable Delano or Inyo, with no commute then flight will occur from the metropolitan centers.
But “Vern” wrong, this not slow moving. This is a HUGE increase in a short period, greater than any in the history of the US economy. When one takes into consideration $5.00 per hour increase adds about $3.00 per hour in fees and taxes, workers comp (shared by EVERYONE on WC), This is monumental
But as the Governor explained, it was a moral and political decision, not based on economics. You have to give the old man credit, he didn’t lie.
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2016/0406/One-billionaire-moves-south-and-New-Jersey-s-budget-falls-apart
Asm Daly made the Hall of Shame! He owns the title of least progressive Democrat in the Assembly. Here is a link http://www.couragescore.org/hall-of-shame/
Yay! AD 69 is distinguished! In a way…
Let me know when you do that press event, JD, I’ll be there with a speech on Daly.